Notes

This page contains the notes from Narrative is for the Reflective Brain

(1) Many have written about how it is easier to influence a person’s decisions if they like you or feel that you empathize cognitively or emotionally with them. One of my favorite books on the topic is Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini.

(2) “Empathy” actually describes two phenomena. Affective Empathy describes how our own emotions mirror the emotions of others – if you see somebody crying and have a tendency to start crying yourself, you are extremely affectivly empathetic. Cognitive Empathy describes how we are able to understand another person’s mental model even if we don’t share it ourselves. If you’re good at talking to children about complex things using their language, you’re probably cognitively empathetic. Different people have higher and lower levels of emotional or cognitive empathy.

(3) The Availability Heuristic describes a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person’s mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method or decision. The availability heuristic operates on the notion that if something can be recalled, it must be important, or at least more important than alternative solutions which are not as readily recalled.

For example, many people fear death at the hands of a terrorist (1/20 million) or in a plane crash (1/11 million) because of the horrific imagery we’re bombarded with continually on television or social media. The truth is that you’re 100 times more likely to die in a car crash then on a plane.

All this is to say, if you can paint a realistic picture in somebody’s mind about a possible outcome, it is going to feel much more likely – or even inevitable – to them.